Remembering Ric Ocasek of The Cars

When you hear a song that you’ve known for a long time outside of its original context, one of two things can happen; you may be disappointed by the execution and differences, or you can be reminded just how brilliant that song is underneath its aesthetic and production. Hearing Tim McGraw’s cover of The Cars’ “Drive” this weekend at the iHeart Radio Music Festival in Las Vegas brought me to the latter. It was, admittedly, somewhat of an unexpected source, but the version that Tim and his band performed as a tribute to Ric, who passed away on September 15th, fitted with identical sounding synthesizers and even a tasteful touch of pedal steel guitar, reminded me that you can sometimes become jaded by and numb to the emotion of great songs that your local classic rock radio stations overplay.

While having loved the Cars’ work at an early age, “Drive” had more recently become one of those very songs I had grown tired of hearing. It felt a bit out of character — perhaps a bit too far toward the pop end of their spectrum, which Ric Ocasek had so brilliantly balanced for the band early on with their power-pop/synth-rock sound.

When you craft an emotional and heartbreaking tune as a songwriter, imagine just how difficult it would be to hand that song over to anyone else at any stage of it’s eventually recorded or “canonized” version. But Ric had the ear (and lack of ego) to know that Cars’ bassist Benjamin Orr could provide the song with what it needed in a vocal performance; think The Beach Boys hit (and arguably best song) “God Only Knows,” written by Brian Wilson, who handed it over to his younger brother Carl to sing, knowing he had the right vocal range and emotion in his voice to give the song its most important element: the melody.

With one of the first albums I can remember falling in love with, I would often ask my mother to pop The Cars’ debut into the cassette deck of the family van. Since then, my ear for what Ric was crafting has changed and my appreciation for it has grown. It’s obvious to hear why their songs would appeal to a young child, but now, what I hear is a flawless execution of a sound and style that is tremendously more difficult to achieve than it may seem.

And on Friday, September 20th, in Las Vegas, Nevada, during Tim McGraw’s soundcheck and eventual live performance, I was reminded of that very sentiment. “Drive” had suddenly become something different and fresh to my ears — and even more heartbreaking than I initially had recognized. It became a pop masterpiece — one that made my appreciation of Ric’s songwriting catalog run even deeper.